Can't Give Up My Bike

As up to now, I haven't been thinking of giving up my bike since riding has given positive effects to my soul. I always feel fresh and energized every time I came back from a short riding trip. Seriously, the thought of giving up my bike scares me a lot and I'd experienced anxiety and frustration over my failure to commit riding once a week. But still, it's much better than a drug addiction. 

The love for motorcycle was and is always there. After getting my driving licence in 1994, I bought a motorbike from my senior in college. He was due to leave for the United States so, he sold his bike to me for RM1,000. It was a Yamaha 100 Sports. 

Source: Google

The bike was fully utilized until 1999. I used it to go around the campus, gatherings and night classes. I even rode it until 2 am for church activities. I really thought it was the best decision I made because when I had the money from my sponsorship, I was divided between purchasing a brand new desktop computer or a bike. Well, you know the answer right?

So what happened after 1999? My friends and I graduated from university and I got a job in Nilai, Negeri Sembilan. My roommate, a Sabahan decided it's time for him to return home. So he offered me to continue paying for his bike loan. A Kawasaki Super Kips 150 as pictured below;

Source: Google

Since the bike was beautiful and sporty, so, I agreed to it. Of course, in order to own that bike, I sold my 100 sports to my fellow colleague in Nilai. It's the bike I used to go to work from Monday to Saturday. I beat all the tolls and traffic lights with it and reached my destinations faster than a car. However, just like many of my friends, It's time to return to my homeland, Sarawak. My homecoming was backed up by the job offer in one of the colleges in Kuching. I hardly found anyone interested with my Kawasaki Kips so I humbly asked the "Towkay" in Kajang to accept the surrender of my bike without penalty. Thank goodness, he was kind enough to let me go peacefully. 

For 3 years (2000-2003) I had no bike when I was in Kuching. I began to feel the financial pinch when I started building a family and the government set the petrol price at RM2.70 per litre. To save cost and with the little savings I had, I bought a second hand Suzuki VR125 cash from a motorcycle dealer in Batu Kawah. It gave me a temporarily relief because after two years, the scooter became unwell,  having all kind of complications. I tried saving it but failed. Sadly, it ended up in a Recycling Centre in 2011.

In 2012, I made another decision to own a bike. But this time around, my choice of bike was largely influenced by my brother. I bought a Kawasaki er6F. A 650 cc bike. I didn't have a B Full driving license but the company helped me in getting the L license, before going for the test. With RM21K for the down payment, I only paid RM280 per month for four years installment. 

Source: Google

The bike was not used for me to go to work, that's why I called it as a weekend bike. It was a good bike: agile, stable and fast. Unfortunately, as my interest grew into a 4 cylinder bike, I began searching for a new bike but affordable. My accidental visit to Huat Bing Motors, MJC was worth it. I felt in love with a Benelli 600 c.c. An affordable 4 cyclinders bike. So, I traded in my Er6F with it and top up RM6K. 

Source: Google/Bikesrepublic.com

It is a nice bike but has many petty issues. In terms of design and sound? No problem. Nice to see and nice to hear. That's the end of my bike story. Now, I am a BeneLLi 600 rider. More riding experience coming my way. Oh yeah...

Logging off

11.13 PM

23/1/2018

The Test Of Bravery

I'm not sure about others, but I think everyone fears something right? Some people joke about it when I told them I'm scared of flying but it only came after 2004, due to near crash landing in Singapore. The experience took out the bravery out of me and replaced it with a phobia. Since then, I swore I would never board a plane anymore.  

Despite the oath I made to myself, I boarded a plane to Kota Kinabalu in December 2009 (5 years later) for a family vacation. The flying wasn't a good experience because I was terrified. Throughout the flight, I hold my wife's hands tightly and sweat a bit. I thought my phobia was long gone, but it's still there. 

In December 2014 (5 years later) I once again had to fly to Sibu, an unexpected journey due to work instruction. I was very upset to receive the news and just as I expected, despite arriving home safely by plane, I still couldn't get rid of the fear. Given a choice, I would have been there by bus. 

The recent flying experience I had was on the 4th and 9th December 2017 for a family vacation. The trip was not planned. But my son insisted we go to Kuala Lumpur because he wanted to see it. So, I thought I'm going to be fine. I tried to be brave and I took travel sickness pill, thinking that it will help me to sleep while flying. I was wrong again, my heartbeat was beating fast and I became very anxious  and restless. My legs were almost cramped. I was awake throughout the 1 hour and 40 minutes journey on air. It became a terrifying experience for me. 

To tell you the truth, I have no idea when this will end. But I'm not going to write about it anymore because digging that experience from my mind is already hard and emotional disturbing. To those who do not have this kind of fear, consider yourself as lucky. 

Logging off.

9.50 AM

16.12.2017

A Simple Prayer

Dear Lord, Give me strength To face turbulence in life,

I know life is not a bed of roses, I know that devils are like roaming lions, But Lord, equip me with your full Armour, and listen to my prayers...Amen.

Sorry guys, some things are best kept secret. Just feel likes writing my prayer in black and white.

Can Friendship Last Forever?

I remember a quote from the Book of Proverbs saying that "the tongue is the hardest thing to tame". Sometimes, before I go to bed, I always reflect upon what I have done for the day, to see whether I have live the day fruitfully or whether I have hurt someone with my words.

A few years back, I had a friend whom I considered as a dear friend of mine. We used to have lunch together and sometimes, I would visit him at his rented house. I thought everything was well with the two of us until recently, he de-listed me from his FaceBook, did not answer my call and did not reply my SMS. We were completely cut off. However, I still see his names appear in other people's FB as their friend. I tried to contact him but he just won't respond. I asked myself these questions "Was he keeping grudges on me? Was there anything wrong I did to him that I didn't know? Was it something I said before?"

I talked to another friend of mine who is his colleague and I got a wonderful response from him. He said "Willie, what is there to lose? You still have many other friends. Friendship don't always last forever". Oh well, what he said was true and I am beginning to accept his advice. St. Paul once said, "forgetting what is behind and focusing on what is ahead of you". I have lost one and I am getting thousands more friends.

And after I came back from Serian yesterday evening, I was kind of surprised to see my son was already fishing with his new-found friend, a 7-year old girl next door. I am happy that my son is now making more friends.

Happy Birthday Dad and Mom

(Happy Birthday Dad and Mom)

My mom is 62 years old and my dad is 59 years old. I know some of us had lost our loved ones and I am writing to show how much I love my parents and appreciate their sacrifices.. I am thankful to God for giving them a good health. This photo was taken during their birthday dinner at Kingwood Inn, Kuching last week.

Before this, I have never spent a lot of money on gifts. This is the first time I spent quite a handsome money to buy a set of Essence watch. I hope they like them.

Happy Birthday Dad and Mom!

A Tribute to the Late Mr Ratino

On Saturday night, I went to one of the bloggers' wedding at Kuching Park hotel. I was seated together with Cyril and he threw me a question on why I blog. I told him that I blog because I want to keep memories of my family members online so that if I passed away unexpectedly, my family would be able to read all the good things that I had written about them. I continued the conversation by telling him that we can never know when God will take our lives away from this world. Little that I know that, a friend who is so dear to me, Mr Ratino Sukarno ,was critically sicked and he passed away the next day (Sunday, 1 August 2010) at 3.45 pm.

I received an SMS from a friend today telling me that he was in a critical condition at Serian hospital. And at 4.00 pm, I received a phone call from another friend informing me that he had passed away. Upon hearing the news, I did not wait long. I took my car keys and drove over to his house. My jaw dropped, my eyes became teary and I was totally speechless when I saw a cold and lifeless body of him lying on the floor. I could not stop my tears from rolling down to my cheeks. I just could not believe that I had just lost a good friend.

(Rusmah and Ratino in 2008)

Ratino and Rusmah became my colleagues in 2005 at PPKS as lecturers. If I'm not mistaken, they got married to each other in 2006. Ratino was a very humble person and he was a man of integrity. That was why, I really enjoyed his company. In just three years with PPKS, his hard work paid off and he was promoted to a managerial post in PPKS.

Ratino took his job seriously. He started the oil palm plantation course in PPKS and he brought many students into PPKS. However, even though he contributed a lot to PPKS positive growth, he was never an arrogant man.

He valued his colleagues and always participated in PPKS social activities. He was always keen to help his friends when they needed help. I think that was why many of his colleagues were with him when he was dying in the hospital.

I still remembered Rusmah, his wife, showed their wedding photos to me from the office PC before I left PPKS. Her face was glowing when she shared her happy moments with me. But today, I can feel that Rusmah's heart and dreams are shattered because Rusmah and Ratino enjoyed their marriage life for only 4-5 years and their eldest child is only 2 years old. The youngest is still in Rusmah's womb.

I just could not sleep tonight thinking about them. So I decided to write this as a tribute to Mr Ratino. May his soul rest in peace.

Mr Ratino will be buried at Kpg Jawa Menaul, Serian on 2nd August 2010.

I'm No FooL! Scammers!

Yeah...you heard me. I'm no fool! I hate those credit card scammers. They think I do not know their tricks? Well, let me share you a story.

Few weeks ago I received a few phone calls from private and personal numbers. He or She claimed that she's from a credit card company who would like to check on the security of my credit card. As the conversation went on, he/she started asking

a. Which bank is my credit card from?
b. Is it a visa or Mastercard?
c. What's the credit card number?
d. What's the expiry date?
e. And finally, what's the last three digits number?

Sounds like, he's making an online purchase right?

When I was called for the first time, I gave the answers to a,b,c,d. I almost got cheated. But then, when the person started to ask for my last three digits number, I refused and he/she was upset! Hahahah!

I then called up the credit card centre complaining to them about this. The real credit card officer told me that a credit card company will not call its customers to check on their credit card. Whalla!

But the thing was...where did they get my phone numbers and my name? Did my forms that I filled in somewhere before fell into the wrong hands? or did someone from the credit card company stole my information?

p/s: What would you do if you were called? Will you play around with them by giving them fake numbers? Hahaha!

Kids Creativity Corner, The Spring

If i'm in Kuching for weekends, the must visit place is The Spring. It is for a very simple reason - it has a "Kids Creativity Corner". I always encourage my son to speak his mind and also play with educational toys so that he will be a smart student in future. And to develop his creativity, I would bring him to do a colouring activity. He loves it and he always asked for it when it comes to weekends. What about you? What would you do to help your child learn?

City Chain Kept Their Promises

(One of my favourite and expensive watches)

How many of you have experienced the disappointment when a shop where you purchased your item, promised to assist you when your item broke but in real fact they did not? Well...I have, especially electrical goods. However, it is a different story with City Chain.

Recently, the glass of my watch broke. I accidentally dropped it from the sofa. So, in April 2010, I sent it back to City Chain, The Spring, where I bought it two years ago. The staff promised me before that if anything happened to the watch, I can always send it to the shop for repair.

Whalla! True enough! When I sent it to them, they accepted it without any question and they promised to get it fix in three months. I was so happy tto hear it, since the watch is my favourite. After three months, it is fixed! they called me up to collect it and it only cost me RM25 to replace the glass in KL.

I must thank City Chain for their good services. I would really recommend this shop, located in The Spring, Kuching, to those who are thinking of buying high quality watches. You won't regret it.

Transcend Portable Hard Drive

My brother-in-law, my wife and myself, bought three Compaq brand laptops but unfortunately, in less than two years, two of the laptops had damaged. Thinking that my last Compaq laptop might end its life soon, I bought my first portable Hard Drive. I am going to transfer all my data from my laptop to this hard drive as quickly as possible. After we lost our trust on Compaq brand, my wife had decided to purchase Acer laptop and she just did!

What do you think? Is Transcend brand reliable?

Survival Skill

Hi guys, sorry for the long silence. I was engrossed with my work in school and as a part-time photographer, I had a lot of photos to edit. Speaking of photography, I would like to congratulate Krisno (http://kerapu-harimau.blogspot.com) for his brand new Canon Eos 50d. Congrats bro!

Now let me divert your attention to my original intention of writing this entry.

Some of you might have known that I just started teaching in school since December 2009 , right after I quit lecturing in a private institute of higher learning, owned by the state government. I might be new to school but, I am not new to teaching. This year, I am in my tenth year of teaching. As long as I love this job, I will definitely give the best to my students. There are a few things that I enjoy being a teacher than being a lecturer. One of it is that, school has more outdoor activities than my previous college. Usually, if the school needs someone to do outside work, I will always be the first to consider it. Hahaha

This week, I taught my Scout team a survival skill : Cooking! I taught them how to cook flour and eggs.

(First, I taught them how to make food out of flour)

(Then, I asked my students to put the flour on sticks and burned them)

(Lastly, we ate them. Nyummie!! very tasty. Tasted like a Mexican pie)

(My students, first time doing this)

(Hahaha! let's get smoky!)

(The eggs that we heated in the soil. Since they were heated in less than an hour, the eggs were not cooked well)

He was 2.45 Kg

Time flies so fast. Last night, as we were sleeping, I took time to look at my son's face. He is really a grown up now. Three years back, he was really small. I remembered welcoming him to this world. He was 2.45 kg and he was in an incubator for two days. But today, he is a little boy who can speak and play. Really thank God for blessing us with this boy.

And I am getting old....hehe

The English Headphones

It's been a while since I blog about my beloved son. He is now 4 years old and he speaks good English. I have chosen to speak English to my son because I know that English is difficult to learn at national schools. In national schools, English is not widely spoken thus, providing very little opportunity for our kids to practice the language. As an educator myself, I believe that parents are always the best people to teach the language and not teachers. Kids who don't speak English at home seem to have difficulties in learning the language in school. That is why even after attending 11 years of formal education, our kids still perform poorly in English examination.

Some of my relatives asked me why I didn't teach my son Iban or Bidayuh. Well...for a very simple reason. My son will learn those languages by himself once he is in school later. He will get a lot of opportunities to learn those languages from other local kids but not English. Although we claim that English is our second language, personally I think English is actually a foreign language to many of our students.

(My son enjoys learning English by listening and singing an English kids' song)

(He take pride in his achievement after saying a word correctly)

(He smiles when he understands a sentence)

(And he will show his serious looking expression when he is concentrating on a song)

It is finished

The harvesting season has ended. And the nature is back to its ugliness.

Chikungunya

Chikungunya (in the Makonde language "that which bends up") virus (CHIKV) is an insect-borne virus, of the genus Alphavirus, that is transmitted to humans by virus-carrying Aedes mosquitoes. There have been recent outbreaks of CHIKV associated with severe illness. CHIKV causes an illness with symptoms similar to dengue fever. CHIKV manifests itself with an acute febrile phase of the illness lasting only two to five days, followed by a prolonged arthralgic disease that affects the joints of the extremities. The pain associated with CHIKV infection of the joints persists for weeks or months, or in some cases years

The incubation period of Chikungunya disease is from two to four days. Symptoms of the disease include a fever up to 40 °C (104 °F), a petechial or maculopapular rash of the trunk and occasionally the limbs, and arthralgia or arthritis affecting multiple joints. Other nonspecific symptoms can include headache, conjunctival Infection, and slight photophobia. Typically, the fever lasts for two days and then ends abruptly. However, other symptoms—namely joint pain, intense headache, insomnia and an extreme degree of prostration—last for a variable period; usually for about 5 to 7 days. Patients have complained of joint pains for much longer time periods depending on their age.

Oh well...I am down with Chikungunya for three days now and only God knows how miserable I feel right now.

Spraying Gundam

Some of you who have been following my blog me long enough know that I have collections of Gundam at home. During this holiday, I had decided to spray one of them. And this is the result. I will post how I did it in my toy blog robotzone.blogspot.com.

A blog writer to a newspaper writer

(My article which was published in the Borneo Post on 8 Mac 2010)

When I was in school, I hated writing the most, other than mathematics of course!. Whenever my teacher asked me to write an essay, I would always complained and sighed. Never did I thought that one day, I will be an enthusiastic blog writer. I guess my interest in writing started with displaying my photos in the blog.

Today I intend to improve my writing skill like Manglish, getting involve in writing for our local newspaper. Starting from last year, I had sent some articles to news agencies such as the Borneo Post and Eastern Time. I am happy that some of them got published and the latest news was as shown in the photo above.

I think writing activity really exercises our mind in terms of digging out our vocabulary and helping us to construct better sentences through planning and drafting. Along the way, you will improve your grammar too. I believe that a good writer can actually express himself well with words.

However, one thing I noticed about some newspaper editors, they tend to rewrite the original write -ups and thus resulting in typo mistakes. Sometimes, they fail to convey the intended message of the original authors. That's what happened to the news I sent earlier. I hope they can improve on this.

Happy New Year To the Chinese

Hello everybody! Kuching town is crowded and jam. Supermarkets are having sales and there is no way to find a parking space starting from the afternoon until night. Furthermore, the city has turn red. All these are for a very simple reason...The Chinese New Year festival. Although I am not celebrating it, I would like to thank the Chinese because the festival has given us One Week break from school work. Oh! how I love my job now. Before this, when I was in the private sector, I had to apply for a leave, but now, I am given the leave for free...oh yes! Another reason for thanking the Chinese is that, the orange. The small Mandarin oranges are my favourite. They are so sweet. Even my son loves them, including the net basket. Hahaha.

I will be going back to my kampung (village) for a week. But during the holiday, I will be going for an adventure trip to Kampung Entanggor. I heard we will have to walk there for two hours through the thick jungle and pass over two hills. But I can't wait to see the village and experience the life with the Iban tribe. Will blog about it when I come back.

The Chocolate Coins

(The chocolate coins)

These few days, I have been thinking about the food that I used to enjoy eating when I was a child. However, some of them are hardly found today. Sad isn't it? Maybe the factories producing them had closed.

This morning, when I was walking at a row of shops near my school, I found a few packets of chocolate coins being sold at a small Malay eating house. I was very surprised and I quickly bought a packet for only RM1.00. No doubt, they are one of my favourite junk food when I was small. I remembered asking my dad to buy these chocolates every time he finished working. Gee...I really miss the sweet taste of them and I never fail to enjoy opening the golden wrappers. A friend of mine this morning said, she likes the chocolate too and she used to put the golden wrappers on her teeth, as if they were her golden teeth.

When I reached my office today, I gave some to my friends and they love the chocolate very much (not because they were free of charge). And when I reached home, I gave one to my son.

While I was blogging about this, my son suddenly appeared behind me, pointing at the photos and said "This are my chocolates. There are two".

Balloons and Smart Reader

My son has been asking us to buy him balloons for a few days but we kept on forgetting (sorry son). However, yesterday we managed to get him five balloons and we played with him. He insisted we used the pump to blow the balloons. He was so happy when he got the balloons and he pumped all the balloons by himself. Once it was done, we played football using the balloons for the whole evening.

How did he get so obsessed with the balloons? Oh well, I guess he was influenced by Mickey Mouse on Disney Channel. He saw Mickey Mouse was playing with balloons so he got attracted to it. It's true what people say about TV huh? We really need to be careful with what our kids are watching in TV. Lucky for my son, he loves only Disney Channel, which is very educational. He speaks good English since he watches Disney Channel everyday. And it is good for me too, since I don't have to invest in books and charts for him to learn.

He is three years old now. When he is five years old, I will send him to Smart Reader Kindie. I heard they conduct lessons in English, using New Zealand syllabus. And I heard many positive feedback from parents too regarding Smart Reader. What do you think?